Temporal metacognition as the decoding of self-generated brain dynamics

Abstract

(150 words)Metacognition, the ability to know about one's thought process, is self-referential. Here, we studied the brain mechanisms underlying metacognitive inferences in a self-generated behavior. Human participants generated a time interval, and evaluated the signed magnitude of their timing (first and second order behavioral judgments, respectively) while being recorded with time-resolved neuroimaging. We show that the first-and second-order judgments relied on the power of beta oscillations (β; 15-40 Hz), while error monitoring subsystems engaged alpha oscillations (α; 8-14 Hz). The spread of an individual's β power state-space trajectories during timing was indicative of the individual's metacognitive inference. Our results suggest that network inhibition (β power) instantiates a state variable determining future network trajectory; this naturally provides a code for duration and metacognitive inferences would consist in reading out this state variable. Altogether, our study describes oscillatory mechanisms for timing suggesting that temporal metacognition relies on inferential processes of self-generated dynamics.

The role of action intentionality and effector in the subjective expansion of temporal duration after saccadic eye movements

“…The brain's sense of time remains a lively topic of study and intense debate, defying a simple or single-mechanism explanation (for review [5][6][7][8][9][10]15 ). Time perception includes estimates of temporal duration, either online or retrospective, as well as judgments of timing (when did the event occur with respect to a probe or clock) and temporal order.…”

“…A more conservative explanation would be that we make an error when trying to make an explicit and retrospective temporal judgment when those judgments are made about events occurring around the time of saccades. If there is no single metric, internal clock tracking visual experience, as is now widely argued, then a temporal judgment task must be based on some other information [5][6][7][8][9][10]15 . Saccadic chronostasis may be an error in retrospection about the timing task, rather than an illusion in online perception 32 .…”

“…There have been several competing explanations for saccadic chronostasis ( Fig. 1) and this debate is complicated by the fact that the underlying neural mechanisms that allow for veridical time perception are a matter of debate [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] . In a recent review of the stopped clock illusion, Yarrow et al 11 identified three main potential explanations for chronostasis: action-backshift (or antedating) explanations, intentional binding leading to an event-shift, or temporal dilation of the post-saccadic time period due to, for example, increased attention or arousal.…”

“…Such explanations seem to assume that there is an internal clock keeping track of the exact time of visual events in a continuous and metric fashion. If there is no such clock, as is widely argued [5][6][7][8][9][10]15 , then perhaps there is no need to continuously correct that clock every time we move our eyes.…”

Basal ganglia high-frequency activity is co-modulated with the phase of motor cortical beta and shifted between the subthalamic nucleus and the internal pallidum during sustained motor control

“…Beta oscillations (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30) are an abundant phenomenon in the cortico-basal gangliathalamo-cortical network and have been associated with a wide range of potential functions, including feedback processing (Cao and Hu, 2016;Tan et al, 2016;Torrecillos et al, 2015), communicating sensorimotor information across widespread areas (Classen et al, 1998;Kilavik et al, 2013;Rubino et al, 2006), maintaining muscle synergies (Aumann and Prut, 2015), movement inhibition (Aron et al, 2016), timing (Kononowicz et al, 2019) as well as clearing out previously held information (Schmidt et al, 2019). However, if instead of assigning broad functions, we aim to link the phenomenon of these oscillations to taskspecific neural computations, such as coincidence detection or recurrent amplification (Carandini, 2012;Douglas et al, 1995), we need to understand in more detail how basal ganglia and cortical activity patterns are co-modulated.…”